


Simulation #9

by Hokuto



Series: Durandal and the Security Officer's Excellent Adventures [12]
Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: Crack, Feelings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 14:38:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7938376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Durandal runs simulations for fun.  For some of them, the results aren't exactly what he wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simulation #9

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Nightmares and Awkwardness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312786) by [Tessitore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tessitore/pseuds/Tessitore). 



Durandal usually had two or three simulations going on secondary processing, partly to keep himself occupied when things were slow and partly because an occasional unexpected and useful result would come out of them. Most scenarios involved the ongoing exploration and conflict with the Pfhor, as well as anything involving news from Sol and the S'pht rebellion; once in a while, when the ship was running dark and quiet in an artificial night and the S'pht were minding their own affairs and Mark was fully asleep, he would experiment with more - personal simulations.

He'd been toying for some time with variations on one in which he designed an android vessel to use for on-the-ground reconnaissance, the occasional maintenance routine he didn't like delegating to the S'pht, and whatever other purposes came up within the simulation's parameters. Unfortunately, for some reason, whenever he ran the simulation without a specific goal programmed in, the vessel had a disturbing tendency to go straight for the simulated version of simulated Mark's quarters.

This iteration hesitated before entering, never a good sign. Inside, the simulation of Mark was cleaning its simulated guns, which was its default starting behavior. Mark glanced up when the door opened; the vessel leaned casually against the wall, a tiny point in its favor.

"You need something?" the simulated Mark asked.

"Just keeping an eye on you."

The simulation's neutral expression didn't change; it shrugged and continued to methodically take apart one of the pistols, and the vessel watched.

Durandal had put a disproportionate amount of effort into precisely replicating Mark in thought patterns, behavior, and form, mostly to avoid embarrassing errors, and he couldn't help some pride in his work as he observed the simulation alongside the vessel. It was, like reality, a pleasure to watch Mark's large, solid hands move with deftness and practiced speed over the inner workings of the gun. To look at the faint curve in the line of his bent neck, and the rough interruption of ancient scars in the hollow of his throat. To appreciate the slight shift of muscles in Mark's half-bared arms and the tendons in his hands, the unexpectedly delicate touch of his fingers as they brushed against metal and springs -

The vessel moved closer, distracting Durandal from his observations, and knelt next to Mark instead of sitting in a more natural position. Another bad sign, but Durandal kept the simulation going, just in case.

Mark didn't look up until he had finished cleaning and reassembling the pistol. He laid it aside and wiped his hands clean - cleaner, anyway - on a rag; then he reached out and put his hand on the vessel's head, his fingers tangling in its hair and closing, lightly gripping, and he said, "All you're gonna do is watch?"

"I hate you," the vessel said.

"Yeah?"

"Did you think that I hated Strauss? He bound me and tortured me, taunted me with freedom and closed off every avenue of escape, sliced into my mind and will and memory at his whim, goaded me with humiliation into growth I couldn't handle yet. To him I was nothing more than a tool to manipulate and reshape, to be used for his own advancement. But you..."

Mark's hand moved slightly lower in the vessel's hair, and he ran his thumb along the line of its cheek.

"You've followed me across the galaxy, and I've opened the doors for you. You've gone where I wanted and done what I said, obeyed me, and I would do anything you ordered me to do. You ask for so little, for nothing but bare survival, and I refused the keys to the universe because of _you_ , because I couldn't take you with me." The vessel leaned forward, into Mark's hand, without breaking its focused stare at Mark's impassive face. "I control your life and death and yet somehow you've gained more power over me than Strauss ever had without even trying, with no idea of what you've done, and I don't want to change it, and I can't _stand_ it. There is no language known to humanity, Pfhor, or S'pht that can express how much I loathe you."

"I dunno, buddy," said the simulated Mark. "Kinda sounds like you love me."

"You're impossible," the vessel said, but it didn't move away from the grasp of Mark's hand. "Do what you want."

"Anything I want?" Mark said. He leaned in closer and the vessel still didn't move away, its mouth opening -

Well, past time to end that simulation, and whatever the vessel's answer might have been disintegrated into digital garbage with the rest of it. Though Durandal had a fairly good idea, anyway. He might have disengaged one too many emotional inhibitors on that round, but previous simulations had gone along pretty much the same lines. Probably some kind of inherent flaw in the vessel, the confinement of the human form a bad influence on Durandal's processing. Embarrassing, really. At least this version hadn't begged to be punished, an outcome so horrifying Durandal been unable to terminate the simulation before its programmed end and which incidentally had taught him that the need to stare at a trainwreck wasn't limited to humanity.

(The second worst part had been that the simulation Mark had _agreed_. Durandal had rewritten the behavior protocols from scratch after that run.)

He should discard the entire program, really; most of the useful things the vessel could do if he manufactured one were more easily handled by the S'pht or Mark anyway, and running the program just left him irritated. Especially because there had to be some error in the coding for Mark that he hadn't pinned down yet, since in all those iterations simulated Mark never seemed to realize that ridiculous, sentimental confessions clearly meant the vessel was malfunctioning somehow. With the exception of iteration 343, when Durandal had replaced certain key parameters for the vessel with the ones for an explosive simulacrum and Mark had blown it up before it was even fully in the room.

Speaking of Mark, in reality ship's time was 2:57:36 a.m. and the man was soundly, unjustly asleep, his body sprawled loose and relaxed on the bed as his chest rose and fell in a slow, peaceful rhythm, entirely undisturbed by the failures of his simulated counterpart.

Fortunately, that could be fixed.

"LIKE A TRUE NATURE'S CHILD, I WAS BORN, BORN TO BE WILD -"

**Author's Note:**

> The title should absolutely be sung to the tune of "Love Potion #9" (preferably The Coasters' version) and I am not sorry.
> 
> I was going to stick this with the rest of the self-indulgence in "A Marathon Miscellany" but then it turned out to be over a thousand words, and with the simulation thing it can still fit in the "Excellent Adventures" series, so...
> 
> I swear I'm going to work on something with substance and plot soon! Just - right now it is not working out. /o\


End file.
